TONY JONES, PRESENTER: We were joined just a short time ago from London by Lord Nicholas Stern who headed the review on the economics of climate change published in 2006.

He was also the principal adviser to the British Government on the economics of climate change and development from 2005 through to 2007.

Lord Stern is now chairman of the Grantham research institute at the London School of Economics. Nicholas Stern, thanks for joining us.

…
NICHOLAS STERN: What China is doing is growing rapidly and trying to reduce the fraction of coal in its energy portfolio and it’s succeeding in doing that.

TONY JONES: Sorry, can I interrupt you there. Do you know what it is at the moment? I found it hard to actually find details of this. What is the percentage of power produced by coal?

NICHOLAS STERN: I think it’s around – you’ll have to check this Tony but I think it’s just below 60 per cent coming down from considerably above 60 per cent.
Don’t hold me on those numbers. All I can tell you is that it’s coming down pretty rapidly in China as a result of direct policy and notwithstanding a likely doubling of the economy in 10 years, that they aim, during that period, to find a peak in coal and then bring it on down thereafter…

***TONY JONES: Finally, as scientists meet in Japan to thrash out the final wording on the IPCC’s next assessment report on the impact of climate change, British economist Professor Richard Toll who was one of the lead authors, has asked for his name to be taken off the document, claiming it’s alarmist and has been changed from talking, as he says, about manageable risk to the four horsemen of the apocalypse. How much damage will his departure do to the credibility of the final report?

NICHOLAS STERN: Not much. He’s always been somebody who as argued that the damages from climate change are there but very small. He’s an outlier really and I think his departure won’t make much difference.

***TONY JONES: Do you think it’s been orchestrated in some way? Is that what you’re suggesting?

NICHOLAS STERN: I don’t know whether it’s orchestrated or not. He’s making his own statements and he’s entitled to do that but I think he’s seen as a bit of an outlier in terms of someone who thinks the damages are much smaller than the rest of us fear and this is risk management, Tony.
You have to be very, very confident that the risks are going to be very small because the science tells us the risks could be very big and it is irreversibility here, as the concentrations in the atmosphere ratchet up, the high-carbon capital and infrastructure gets locked in. Delay is very dangerous so one person saying he thinks the risks might be very small is a very marginal part of the argument because most of the science is telling us that the risks are very big and with the irreversibility that we see in this, any kind of common sense or risk analysis says we should act strongly…

Stern the politician/non-scientist said: “…because the science tells us the risks could be very big and it is irreversibility here, as the concentrations in the atmosphere ratchet up, the high-carbon capital and infrastructure gets locked in.”
What risks ? More food and plant growth ? Fewer humans dying ?
Is this cult literate ? Stern said: ‘Ratchet’ ? Co2 becomes ‘locked in’? The earth’s climate system is a complex million-variable convection system, and ‘greenhouse gases’ – another very useless appellation – are recycled by various processes in a variety of ways. There is no ‘ratcheting’ of anything.
I am still awaiting rationale as to why a trace chemical 4/100 of 1 % can cause anything, and why the 95 % emitted by Gaia is the ‘good’ Co2 and the 5 % by man, the ‘evil’ Co2….Stern would have no idea about any of this.

Unmentioned but in the described report are the constant references to shifting education to fit the new kinds of thoughtways required to fit in with Jay Forester’s 1970s Limits to Growth modelling for the Club of Rome and the World Dynamics software simulations he created subsequently. As the materials acknowledge education globally is no longer focusing on what is an accurate representation of reality. Instead, the focus is on what visually stimulates emotions to take action.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has said that UNESCO’s poorly understood control over education, especially when joined to that of the OECD, gives the UN the ability to gain implementation of its Climate Change recommendations. In the small print these models always say they are about changing the social systems, including human behavior. That’s why we keep hearing Kurt Lewin’s mantra “There is nothing as practical as a good theory” all over the world.

As long as it influences policy makers, it does not need to be true. As Marx noted, the point is to change the future.

stern n Guano..what a pair
economist types with bugger all science knowledge running figures to screw nations into oblivion
chinas busy Building coal plants and so is germany
ya have to wonder what planet these buffoons live on

Stern looked like some cheap plastic robot during that interview. He was just laughable. I will wait some time before I expect to see Tony Jones having a red hot go at CAGW alarmism but he has seen the light on issues in the past and done a good job. He is generally a predictable lefty presenter on our ABC but is capable of being effective when the penny drops on some issue.

The clearest point Stern makes is that the IPCC report self-selected itself to be alarmist and doesn’t want anyone but high risk adherents contributing to the unrosiest of scenarios that they think they can get away with at this time.

Don’t get too excited that the ABC and its “ethnic TV” companion SBS are developing even-handedness in the CAGW “debate”. Both channels’ evening news programs featured a sickening segment featuring Ban Ki Moon in Greenland, where apparently disaster is just around the corner and young Greenlanders are in for a terrible future as their ice disappears. There was so much emotive nonsense I was shaking my head that adults could actually believe so much BS, or even produce it in the first place. The report was actually produced by the BBC.

Sure, it’s a misleading indicator, as with many things from the alarmists. Coal might be dwindling from it’s percentage of the mix, but only because other generation methods are ramping up more quickly. You can double your usage, but if that doubling is across the board you’re still looking at 60%.

We also know that China has many nuclear power plants under construction, which should rapidly reduce the percentage from coal, but probably won’t actually reduce coal usage in the near term.

Lord Stern is now chairman of the Grantham research institute at the London School of Economics.

Set up by Grantham to promote ideas that will make Grantham even richer than he already is.

It is not part of the LSE , its actual a separate legal entered which does no research and no education of its own . Its ‘task’ is to promote the view point of the person paying its bills, in other words its marketing firm with all that means for truth and reality.

The LSE took the money and turned a blind eye , while allowing a ‘iffy’ organisation to ride on the back of its name, and not for the first time. One day the media may start to say just what this organisation actual is rather than give it the credit it has no right too.

Would have to see if Stern is implying that China is adopting renewable energy in place of coal. The EPA lists China at 70% energy from coal in 2011, same as in 2006. Oil is 18, and natural gas is 4. The only significant renewable is hydro at 6, which they never count as renewable in terms of energy mandates. Other renewables is listed as <1%.

China is continuing hell for leather for coal, opening new coal fired stations every month! 79% of electricity is generated by coal. Wind power is an infinitesimally small proportion of the energy used in China. Remember China has one fifth of the world’s population.

An interesting development all over the verdant sector: they’ve cleaved so tightly to the bad-CO2- mus- be- eliminated litany that they’ve collapsed on anti-nuclear and hydro, two former evils that have now come to be grudgingly respectable since, at long last, they’ve come to see that renewables are a joke. They also see that they can take credit for the surge in nuclear and hydro that will take place with green pressure off them. It will be good to see the next “EU 5yr plan” as things crumble in the carbon battle elsewhere. For UK, the rest of the ‘commonwealth’ has abandoned them on this stuff and the eastern EU is not buying into it. Oh the pressures! It won’t be long now. The UN has even abandoned corn auto fuel!!

My take on it is that it was just ABC propaganda implying, as per the ABC title “Back tracking on carbon pricing will damage Australia”, that Australia is an outlier taking the wrong direction.

There are some powerful vested interests in the UK, many of them Lord and Lady landowners, making millions out of the poor with their green investments, chairmanship of ‘renewable’ industry firms, subsidies for green technology and income from windfarms on their land. They will not be backing down anytime soon.

I found it disgraceful and distasteful that Lord Stern was criticising the policy of the Australian Government, especially as the carbon tax was one of the issues they were elected on.

Wow.
From Toniy Jones, with his usual reflection of the ABC ‘watermelon’ agenda (and no Mr Scott, I don’t know how he votes), this was practically an ambush interview.
I’m not holding my breath, but maybe, just maybe, this is the start of some movement on the part of the ABC. I’ll just go check my 7th floor window for any passing pigs …

Pretty sympathetic interviewer, is Aussie TV like that throughout?
But I wonder how your average Aussie (and Canadian) takes to being lectured to (and slighly threatened) by a Brit. Watching that made me feel like we have a world govt telling unruly nations to behave themselves, for the good of the planet.

First, hats off to Dr. Richard Tol for his integrity and courage.(respectful moment of silence)

Isn’t it interesting the way Stern spins China? They are reducing the fraction of coal in their energy portfolio huh. That’s a lovely and probably true statement, and yet it’s utterly misleading. They are ramping up coal use like mad.

Stern is just playing games. Even the guys at Climate Central will (more or less) give you the truth on this without too much spin here.

The most honest thing he said about it was this:

in 10 years, that they aim, during that period, to find a peak in coal and then bring it on down thereafter…

Nick Stern came off looking and sounding a fool. He just returned from China, he claimed, but couldn’t tell us anything about what he actually witnessed. I live in Asia and not one government supports a price on carbon. And Australia knows this and in order to remain competitive, must do away with a tax which will do nothing about raising or lowering temperatures. Nick – get a life.

“China is continuing hell for leather for coal, opening new coal fired stations every month! 79% of electricity is generated by coal. Wind power is an infinitesimally small proportion of the energy used in China. Remember China has one fifth of the world’s population.Even if China’s “other renewables” sector increased tenfold it would still only be 3% of the total! Hard sums, eh?”
Nothing like a pack of lies to incite the mob, eh? China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing during the 2004-2010 period. Every year China adds additional power capacity equal to all of Britain and will continue to do so for decades. Coal has dropped in importance and is now 66% and will be 44% by 2030, the same as the U.S. It was but a few years ago that the U.S. energy production was over 53% coal powered. Hydro stands at 17% and will increase faster than coal. China is now the leading importer of LNG, which will also grow in importance. China is interested in reducing smog/air pollution, not CO2. Nuclear is the other big future player. Half of the nuclear plants currently under construction are in China – 28. Yesterday
a new reactor was connected to the grid and about one new reactor every two months will go into production for the next several years. China will surpass the U.S. fleet by 2030 and has plans for 500 by mid- century and 1600 by the end of the century.

William:
When logic and reason is removed from the analysis, the analysis is no longer ‘research’ but rather the production of flexible propaganda to push an agenda. The fact that there is obviously unfettered economic climategate in each IPCC report is a pathetic consequence when ‘research’ becomes political propaganda. The other part of the ruse is underestimating the cost and benefits of the green scams. The developed countries have spent trillions of dollars on green scams. What is the benefit for the trillions of dollars spent? How much more must be spent? How long will this scam continue?

The companies and individuals that profit from the green scams, carbon trading, and the never ending analysis of the green/climate issues are using fantasy extreme AGW to push the green scams and to profit from the process.

As noted in this paper one economic study used an assumed increase in planetary temperature of 12C to determine economic impact (a super high upper end is used to multiple the economic costs) which is absurd. Even if 100% of the warming observed in the last 70 years was due to the increase in CO2 the warming from today to 2100 with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 there would be less than 0.5C warming. (See comment for details.)

There is no end to the shenanigans. The observed warming in the last 70 years is at high latitudes which supports the scientific assertion that the planet’s feedback response is negative rather than positive (it is a fact that cloud cover in the tropical region increases or decreases to resist warming), the ‘Stern’ type AGW economic analysis uses a ridiculous amplification case (positive feedback which is only possible if the tropical troposphere amplifies the CO2 forcing which it does not, it is fact that the warming of the tropical troposphere is 100% to 300% less than what the IPCC’s general circulation model predict) to get a high temperature increase for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 and then moves the warming down to lower latitudes to enable the increase to occur in regions that are relatively hot (tropical Africa for example) rather than relatively cold (Canada and Russia for example) and then adds droughts as opposed to a general increase in precipitation (a warmer planet is a wetter planet with less extreme rather than more extreme climate events due to a reduction in latitudinal temperature differences) to multiple the consequences.

“Tall tales and fat tails: the science and economics of extreme warming”
“A secondary conclusion relates to the importance of the damage function in economic analysis. As we saw in Section 3, with one damage function the expected value of the policy was rather insensitive to the probability of extreme warming, while another damage function makes the economic analysis hypersensitive. This is because each damage function implicitly defines what level of warming is considered catastrophic, and uncertainty about extreme warming plays a profoundly different role in economic analysis depending on how we define ‘catastrophic’. For all of the focus on the economics of catastrophic climate change, surprisingly little attention has been paid to this issue. At a basic level, we must try to understand better the limits of human adaptation to climate change. A noteworthy example is provided by Sherwood and Huber (2010), who note that for wet-bulb temperatures above 35◦ C, dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible in humans and mammals, causing hyperthermia and death. They proceed to estimate that with an increase in global mean temperature of roughly 12◦ C, most of today’s population would be living in areas that would experience wet-bulb temperatures of more than 35◦ C for extended periods. Given how important the limits of adaptation appear to be for economic calculations, further exploration of such limitations may prove informative.

Our analysis indicates it would be especially valuable to gain a greater understanding of both the physical and social processes associated with a much warmer world. The proposed endeavour will necessarily be speculative in many respects. It will involve trying to understand which physical feedbacks will become significant in the next few centuries, and how much warming they can and cannot account for. It will require that we both imagine and take seriously the social and demographic processes that would accompany a quickly changing climate. The fat tail of the climate sensitivity distribution has perhaps been an effective vehicle for bringing attention to the issue of extreme warming, but it is time to move beyond this convenient metaphor (William: Why the heck is a metaphor required for an analysis? Do the analysis on multiple cases with realistic future temperature rises) and build a scientific view of society in a rapidly warming world.”

Comment: Observed temperature response of the planet supports the assertion that there is negative rather than positive feedback response to change in forcing. As warming for neutral (neither positive or negative) feedback is only 1.2 and 0.7C warming has occurred to date.) A realistic case for predicted warming to 2100 is therefore 0.5C warmer than today with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes. For that case there is no adaptation required, the temperature rise is primarily beneficial. The CO2 rise is beneficial.

Stern’s statement about Tol being “an outlier” reminds me of an old joke I sometimes use to lighten the tone when I am giving a talk to a mixed discipline scientific audience. It goes something like this:
——————-
Some scientists were given the problem of proving that all numbers are prime.

The mathematician’s proof is: 2 is prime, 2+1 = 3 is prime. Therefore all numbers are prime by induction.

The engineer’s proof is: 2 is prime, 3 is prime, 4 is prime, 5 is prime. Well it looks like all numbers are prime and that’s good enough for me. [remember this is just a joke]

The astronomer’s proof is: 2 is prime, 3 is prime, 4 is, hmmmm, well it must be bad data, an outlier, so we throw it out, 5 is prime so it looks like a trend and all numbers must be prime.
——- — —–

The joke can be continued for several other disciplines but you get the gist. The joking part is the (in this case self deprecating and usually humorous to astronomers) reference to a cavalier dismissing as an outlier anything that does not agree with your pre-conceived notion. I am thinking of modifying the joke the next time to replace the astronomer with a climate scientist.

The fact remains that China is increasing it’s use of coal right now, not reducing it. All of this talk of what China is going to do in a decade and what the mix will be in 2030 and how many nuclear reactors they’ll have at the turn of the century is all jolly good fun, but it doesn’t change the fact that China burns almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined today, and that they are increasing their use of coal, not reducing it, today.

Say, let’s table the political measures and the War on Coal in the U.S. for a decade and see what happens in China first? I’d be good with that.

As regards China, there are big liquidity problems:”Over the past month, we have explained in detail not only how the Chinese credit collapse and massive carry unwind will look like in theory, but shown various instances how, in practice, the world’s greatest debt bubble is starting to burst. One thing we have not commented on was how actual trade pathways – far more critical to offshore counterparts than merely credit tremors within the mainland – would be impacted once the nascent liquidity crisis spread. Today, we find the answer courtesy of the WSJ which reports that for the first time in the current Chinese liquidity crunch, Chinese importers, for now just those of soybeans and rubber but soon most other products, “are backing out of deals, adding to a wide range of evidence showing rising financial stress in the world’s second-biggest economy.” In other words, the World’s second largest economy may not have the funds to move anywhere but to stay with the cheapest fuel-coal!http://www.zerohedge.com/

It just occurred to me that this guy, Stern, has really no alternative reason to say anything other than his continued stream of fabrications about carbon tax and Carbon trading. It serves him no purpose to retreat one bit on his 1970s hippie green religion. What else is he going to do? Did you listen to his language? It is a steady stream of Green vernacular babble, all BS and phraseology of long practiced diatribes. Makes me wonder what I will sound like when I get old…er. Stern is absolutely deluded. He is gone.

As far as ABC goes. I could detect some skepticism in his response to Sterns remarks about Sterns claims of China’s efforts wrt coal plants etc. It was pretty stunning how Stern is so emphatic about how the world should turn on what China is doing then he immediately disavows knowing what the facts were. “don’t hold me to those numbers” he says after trying to browbeat Australia and the world into changing the world currency to carbon. ‘Oh don’t hold me to those numbers. I don’t know what they are [ but they are fantastic].”

Stern is an ass. He is a liar. He is a hippie leftover.

I think ABC could have gone a little farther. Prime Minister Harper killed Kyoto etc in Canada. Now Canadian news is pivoting to mock global warming:

“Delay is very dangerous so one person saying he thinks the risks might be very small is a very marginal part of the argument because most of the science is telling us that the risks are very big and with the irreversibility that we see in this, any kind of common sense or risk analysis says we should act strongly…”
——-
We can’t have a marginal part of the argument. Look at the past scientific break-throughs, they’ve always come from huge consensus. No “lone wolf” on the fringes of the consensus was ever right about anything. The masses are never in error. /sarc

MikeT says:
March 28, 2014 at 5:01 am
“Don’t get too excited that the ABC and its “ethnic TV” companion SBS are developing even-handedness in the CAGW “debate”. Both channels’ evening news programs featured a sickening segment featuring Ban Ki Moon in Greenland…”

The same propaganda is being broadcast every day in Britain by the BBC and Channel 4 on their news programs, and, as usual, opinion and speculation about climate is being treated as proven scientific fact. It’s all part of the “global warming” climate hysterics’ campaign to browbeat those non-believing politicians and bureaucrats into signing unbreakable CO2 reduction treaties. This process will continue until next year, when it is planned that a world-wide agreement binding on all governments will be formalized.

There is a feeling of desperation about the climate hysterics. They seem to think that this will be their last opportunity to get their agenda accepted and imposed world-wide before the whole “global warming” scam finally collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.

Col, if china reduces coal use percentage not by shutting down an existing coal plant, but by instead adding 1 new coal plant plus 1 nuclear plant plus 1 hydroelectric plant, has their total CO2 emission gone down or gone up? Can you envision a scenario where their coal use as a percent of total power generation might go as low as 60% or even lower, and yet total CO2 emissions could still be increasing? If other countries throughout the world follow china’s good example, how long will it take for global warming to be reversed?

In 2014, Chinese CO2 emissions will be double those of the US. The future course of their emissions is basically dependent on their rate of economic growth and their improvement in emission intensity (CO2 emitted per $GDP). The Chinese have pledged to improve their emission intensity by about 3% per year, roughly what the developed world has done for the past half century. To pick your favorite estimate for the growth of the Chinese economy, subtract 3% if you are optimistic that the Chinese will meet their objectives, add it to 1, and calculate the exponential growth rate until their emissions are triple the US’s. Even with a 4% growth rate, China’s emissions will be triple the US (a 50% increase from today) in another decade! That’s right – if the US managed to reduce emissions the requested 80% over the next decade, the almost inevitable growth in Chinese emissions will more than negate those cutbacks. There are several billion other people in the undeveloped world who are desperate to follow China’s path.

You can tell when an IPCC report or major climate holiday/conference is imminent by the massive increase in front page alarmism in The Guardian. It’s been in overdrive for the last few weeks.

There was a time, a while back, when I thought even The Guardian was starting to soft pedal the hysteria a bit. The number of prominent “we’re all doomed!” articles seemed to have noticeably declined – possibly as an ill-fated attempt to slip out of the back door without being noticed – but like junkies returning for one last fix…

Col Mosby says:
March 28, 2014 at 7:20 am
“Nothing like a pack of lies to incite the mob, eh? China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing during the 2004-2010 period. ”

Calls other people liars, then says
“China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing”

What do you mean with “USE OF COAL HAS SLOWED”; I take it that they burn it with one third of the speed they did before? Oh wait; there’s also an “INCREASING” in your sentence; okay, so what you really WANT to say is that they burn MORE coal now;
so I see that you completely agree with the statement you criticized even though you are incapable of forming a well-formed sentence.

“…You have to be very, very confident that the risks are going to be very small because the science tells us the risks could be very big…”

Once again, the Precautionary Principle rears its ugly head. One has to be absolutely, 100%, without any doubt what-so-ever, confident that the risks are going to be small in order to state that view, but one need only point out that the science indicates that the risks might be very big, even if that is a scientifically insignificant chance, in order to demand massive action.

It is irrational on so many levels. First, the science is definitely pointing to little risk and mostly benefits from a modest warming. Stern is ignoring the science to maintain his catastrophic position. Secondly, the cost of action is never in their equations. Only the cost of inaction multiplied by an arbitrary multiplier derived from the high end forecasts of climate models that have already been shown to be far too high. The cost of action is very real and ignored. The cost of inaction is hypothetical at best, yet trumpeted as fact. Third, the effectiveness of action is almost never mentioned, because it is almost inconsequential and irrelevant. When it is mentioned at all, it is a lie, derived from some fairy tale calculations of kumbaya agreements that no country will adhere to, unless some form of cheap, safer nuclear energy becomes popular, in which case, this is all a mute point anyway.

Evoking the Precautionary Principle is the practice of agenda driven social engineers. It has no place in rational conversation, as it is an irrational concept, because implementation of the Precautionary Principle usually produces more harm than it avoids. It is a linear way of thinking in a non-linear reality. It doesn’t work!

I am still awaiting rationale as to why a trace chemical 4/100 of 1 % can cause anything,

Why? Isn’t the physics of this clear enough? The atmosphere is optically opaque in the CO_2 linked frequency bands with a very short mean free path of photons in these bands. It efficiently absorbs LWIR in these bands, and the CO_2 molecules that absorb the energy almost without exception collide with other air molecules and transfer that energy to them before/instead of reradiating it.

If the CO_2 were not there, dry air would be nearly completely transparent to LWIR and surface radiation would travel directly to outer space without warming the atmosphere. The colder atmosphere would radiate much, much less LWIR back at the surface — less because it is colder, less because it has no energy levels likely to be excited at the molecular energies corresponding to their temperature. The surface would receive, on average, less total energy in the form of radiation and the air in contact with it would be, on average, colder and more difficult to warm. The surface would then be colder.

As it is, the CO_2 absorbs a substantial amount of the radiation the surface emits, warms the air, and reradiates it back in the direction of the surface. The surface warms until its outgoing radiation rate compensates for the additional back radiation self-consistently. It is really pretty simple.

The cooling process of the dry atmosphere is also slowed by the presence of CO_2. The outgoing radiation that is absorbed near the surface that warms the atmosphere as noted warms the whole atmosphere, not just the CO_2 molecules. The dry atmosphere (warmed at the bottom, cooled at the top) is convectively unstable and as it circulates up and down in convective rolls it establishes a thermal profile called the dry adiabatic lapse, where it gets cooler as one gets higher and the atmosphere less dense without actually losing energy (because O_2 and N_2 radiate only very weakly at the temperatures involved). CO_2 is internally radiating all of the way up, but until you reach a sufficiently low density (so that the mean free path of LWIR photons in its radiation coupled bands is large enough that photons have a substantial probability of escaping from the atmosphere altogether with no further absorption) the photons are simply reabsorbed elsewhere, up or down or sideways, in the atmosphere with only a slow diffusive transfer of energy. The temperature of the atmosphere at the height where they finally become a channel through which the atmosphere itself can cool is much lower than that of the surface, and as a consequence the radiative flux from the much less dense CO_2 at that height is much smaller than the flux that would have been lost directly from the surface in precisely those bands if the dry atmosphere had no CO_2 in it.

With CO_2 or without it, the Earth SYSTEM has to emit radiation at the same average rate it absorbs it. The total incoming radiation rate is approximately independent of the presence or absence of CO_2 (which is not a good reflector, it is a good absorber). The rate that it emits it is either the rate it is emitted straight to space from the surface (no CO_2, atmosphere a weak absorber and radiator), determined by the temperature of the surface, or it is the sum of the rates it is emitted by the atmosphere to space in the greenhouse bands and emitted by the surface to space in the unblocked bands. The rate that it is emitted by the atmosphere to space in the greenhouse bands is strictly lower than the rate the warmer surface would emit in those same bands straight to space without CO_2. Consequently the surface must emit at a higher rate in the unblocked bands to balance the unchanged incoming rate of radiation. The only way it can radiate at a higher rate at all is by being at a higher temperature. End of story.

Note that this latter argument doesn’t depend in any meaningful way on whether or not the atmosphere is absorbing incoming energy as well as outgoing energy, or where that absorption primarily occurs. It only depends on the average temperature at which it radiates, and the fact that that temperature, for a variety of reasons, is almost always substantially cooler than the surface temperature.

In a non-dry atmosphere things are indeed more complicated, because water vapor is a more powerful and more prevalent greenhouse gas in ITS absorption bands, and because water vapor can undergo phase changes and contribute huge nonlinear shifts in albedo (that can reflect both incoming radiation before it warms the surface, and surface radiation that would otherwise escape to space outside of the greenhouse bands). But the idea is still the same — as long as any part of the total outgoing radiation is being emitted from gases at a much lower temperature than the surface in bands where the direct loss from the surface is blocked, the Earth system itself will not be in balance until it warms in unblocked channels enough to compensate.

There is direct, unambiguous evidence in the form of top-of-atmosphere downward direct spectrographs that clearly, unambiguously, show the radiation holes in the greenhouse bands, and equally clearly connect the mean temperature/rate of radiation in those holes to the expected upper troposphere temperature where the atmosphere becomes transparent in those bands. These spectrographs are essentially a photograph of the GHE in action. No physicist — no non-physicist — who sees these spectrographs and understands the simple ideas of detailed balance, radiation theory, and thermal radiation can possibly doubt the existence of a “greenhouse effect” even though the mechanism is ill-named and has little to do with the mechanism that warms actual greenhouses (which is as much blocking of convective losses as it is blocking of radiative losses and where the DALR is irrelevant).

It does the skeptical argument no good at all for skeptics to reveal a vast general ignorance of detailed balance, radiation theory, and thermal radiation in the first words out of their mouth in any given discussion of the greenhouse effect and global warming. The issue is not whether or not there is a greenhouse effect or that the effect itself makes no sense or isn’t substantially causally linked to a “trace gas” (that is present in sufficient concentration to make the atmosphere opaque to in-band LWIR hundreds of times over) — it is what marginal or differential variation in surface temperature one expects long after one passes the nonlinear threshold where the atmosphere first becomes opaque. If a mirror is already (say) 95% reflective with a silver coating 0.01 mm thick, it doesn’t become twice as reflective if you make the coating 0.02 mm thick. Maybe it makes it 96%. Maybe it makes it 98%. Maybe it makes it 99.9%. But at that point the marginal gain possible from thickening the silver is very, very limited.

The atmosphere is of course a lot more complicated. It is simultaneously already deeply saturated in CO_2 (so that doubling CO_2 can have only a very small effect at best) and it has multiple nonlinear coupled mechanisms that can either augment or cancel whatever effect a change in CO_2 might (all things being equal) otherwise have produced. The total feedback in those other mechanisms, in other words, can be positive or negative.

In the case of the actual atmosphere, the original GCMs from Hansen’s day on have asserted and implemented feedback (especially from water vapor) so strong that it actually exceeded the direct warming expected from CO_2. This is precisely the opposite of what one intuitively expects for an otherwise stable system — otherwise one has to explain why water vapor doesn’t all by itself cause a positive feedback ongoing warming — the Earth (say) warms a degree due to some natural fluctuation, which causes it to warm a second degree from positive feedback on that fluctuation, which causes it to warm a third degree from positive feedback on the positive feedback, to the point where even if the original fluctuation disappears, you now have runaway feedback from water vapor alone.

A small but (I think) increasing number of people (including many climate scientists) either already have long believed or are starting to believe based on substantial evidence that Hansen’s assertions of strong positive feedback are wrong, that net feedback is likely neutral to negative or at most only very weakly positive. This slow change in the position of climate science itself is “reflected” in the systematically decreasing estimate of total climate sensitivity, the supposed sum of direct CO_2 linked warming and all feedbacks. It has gone from Hansen’s originally egregious claims of 3 to as much as 5 or 6 C by 2100 down to where there is a bit of a battle to hold climate sensitivity on the high side of 2 C. Direct CO_2 linked warming is believed to be ballpark 1 to 1.5 C (where the physics itself isn’t well enough known to specify it more accurately, and where it is impossible to directly measure it or infer it from existing measurements of the multivariate climate system with its substantial natural variation). The total feedback has thus dropped from a multiplicative factor of as much as four — three parts of the warming due to water vapor feedback to one part direct warming by CO_2 — to less than 2, no more than one part water vapor to one part CO_2.

The actual range of hypothesized values has substantially increased, with some people asserting negative feedback from water vapor for a total climate sensitivity of as little as 0.5 C (one part to CO_2 accompanied by minus a half part from water, largely due to increases in albedo that outweigh any increased greenhouse effect from water vapor per se), some people asserting nearly neutral (no net) water vapor feedback so that the direct warming from CO_2 is all we are likely to see, somewhere around 1-1.5 C total by 2100 plus or minus natural variations not unlikely to be on the same general scale, and with some people still asserting a half-part or so positive feedback for a total around 2.2-2.4 C by 2100. Only hard core warmists still are holding on to more than this, and they are as much an embarrassment to the warmist side of the debate as greenhouse effect “deniers” are to the skeptical side of the debate.

Sadly, those hard core warmists still have their side adequately and completely inappropriately represented by the hottest running broken GCMs, which the IPCC and CMIP5 people have stubbornly resisted removing from the multi-model ensemble mean that the use to make predictions, assign confidence intervals and generally maintain the panic. This is a shameful thing, and one day all of science will have its reputation tarnished if — as seems increasingly likely — the planet experiences distinctly non-catastrophic warming due to even a doubling of CO_2 or worse, if net feedback indeed is negative, natural variation has been more than half responsible for the late 20th century warming spurt, and natural cooling outweighs the small marginally positive warming the Earth might have experienced from the additional CO_2 as the climate proceeds to continue its slow trajectory towards an expected but ill-understood glacial transition and the nice, warm Holocene comes to an end.

In a sane universe, there would be no warmists, no skeptics. The very terms are direct evidence that science itself has run deeply awry. All scientists should be skeptics. No scientist should ever display so much bias towards some particular theoretical prediction being correct (especially in what has to be the most difficult set of theoretical computations humans have ever attempted, computations that reach the envelope of what is possible with no prior experience to validate any aspect of the results) that they could legitimately be called “warmists” because they hold onto the theoretical predictions as being more probably true than reality itself even as evidence accumulates that they are completely wrong.

One day soon — maybe — nature will resolve the matter. Maybe in years, maybe in decades. Eventually either it will have deviated so far from the theoretical predictions that no rational scientists can “deny” that the GCMs are badly broken and that climate sensitivity is low and within the bounds of natural variation or that broken GCMs or not, the climate is definitely warming at a potentially catastrophic rate in the long run, with a warming signal that does indeed outweigh natural variation. At the moment, there is literally no way to disentangle natural warming or cooling trends from a CO_2 driven component. In a strongly coupled, nonlinear, chaotic system there may never be! At least, none that we can ever reliably compute.

Serious question: Why are the warmies ranting about China anyway? Is this a strawman “example of good”? Suggesting, maybe we should have a global communist government; then we could all like in a green paridise, just like China? or “Look, even China is getting on board!”

Clearly, China is doing what is best for them. I am quite sure that they are not concerned about CAGW. I suspect any reduction in coal “portfolio” is strictly a smog reduction attempt, or possible LNG is saving them money? I am not sure on the economics of coal vs LNG.

China is digging its own coal.
So that Australia will not sell its coal.
This man is an economist?
But China will only need to do this for the next 10 years.
Then it will have peaked at coal production and consumption.
Cor blimy govner chimchimnay chimchimchary

Ok, on the topic of China, could the siteing location of the Mauna Loa CO2 measurment station be unduly influenced by China’s massive CO2 output? I remember reading a post that showed that CO2 was not actualy well mixed. Could the global CO2 concentrations be lower than Mauna Loa indicates?

“China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing”

Progressive double-speak. My favorite is when people in Washington increase spending on their pet programs year after year, but constantly talk about massive spending cuts, because the increase in spending was less than they hoped. It was only a reduction in what they wanted, but still an increase in what they had. They call it a spending cut for the sole purpose of deluding the people who voted for them, basically calling them idiots in the process.

Here is my theory which is mine and belongs to me. CAGW/CACC is a coalmine canary for mass credulity. Just when First World mind control through leftist solidarity* of the mass media and public education was reaching critical mass as indicated by the near universal acceptance of the meme, the globalist ruling classes were thrown a curve by the emergence of an uncontrolled global market of ideas— the Internet— and a popular media outlier— Fox News. (Memo to Lord Stern: better an outlier than an out-and-out-liar.) Suddenly the canary has regained consciousness!

The global governance camel’s nose is in the door, but is being pushed back much harder and more effectively than expected by Climategate, the Hiatus and the recent “sensible” cooling trends with accompanying “cooling is warming” Newspeak (if the temperature plummets in the forest and everyone is there to feel it, is it still getting warmer?) These are being publicized and popularized by the alternative media and water cooler chat and are on the tipping point of going viral. So now it is all hands to the camel’s backside to push it the rest of the way through the door by sheer force of consensus-is-science Newspeak and international peer pressure. Thus Papa Stern calls out the shameful antisocial behavior of dear children Australia and Canada— pointing to the recent crocodile tears of Black Sheep Brother China and hypocritically taking personal credit for the US’s recent hygiene turnaround— and stresses that the Family of Nations is ready to welcome back the Prodigals with open arms. Gag me.

*I am not a pure conspiracist, but a solidaritist/conspiracist; conspiracy is the tip of the iceberg, from there it’s solidarity all the way down, Solidarity-of-error (clapping for Tinkerbelle) is the New Truth. Its poster children are legion.

NICHOLAS STERN: I don’t know whether it’s orchestrated or not. He’s making his own statements and he’s entitled to do that but I think he’s seen as a bit of an outlier in terms of someone who thinks the damages are much smaller than the rest of us fear and this is risk management, Tony.
You have to be very, very confident that the risks are going to be very small because the science tells us the risks could be very big and it is irreversibility here, as the concentrations in the atmosphere ratchet up, the high-carbon capital and infrastructure gets locked in. Delay is very dangerous so one person saying he thinks the risks might be very small is a very marginal part of the argument because most of the science is telling us that the risks are very big and with the irreversibility that we see in this, any kind of common sense or risk analysis says we should act strongly…

What a load of utter tosh and alarmist garbage. The reasons he says “we should act strongly” can be found HERE. It’s called carbon profits and profiteering.

CodeTech says:
March 28, 2014 at 5:01 am
Sure, it’s [% of coal-derived energy] a misleading indicator, as with many things from the alarmists.

This from Stern is an outrageous use of misinformation. Even Mueller (pre- and post-cooption by the warmists) notes that the Chinese increase in coal is so enormous as to make reductions in the US (and obviously Britain and Europe) immaterial.

And the exchange succeeded because the interviewer didn’t know his stuff or wasn’t prepared to contradict his paymasters.

China coal production:
“While Beijing said in September that it would cut the share of coal in its primary energy mix to “less than 65 percent” by 2017, down from 66.8 percent in 2012, consumption will still rise in absolute terms, with total energy demand set to grow 4.3 percent a year over the 2011-2015 period.

Dave says:
March 28, 2014 at 4:56 am
“because the science tells us the risks could be very big ”

Surely there must be many alarmists who read WUWT. Could one of you please tell me exactly what the “science” is that leads you to your conclusions?
========================================================

I watched the whole thing and did not see it as hard questioning of Stern at all. He was given a platform to air his views and the interviewer simply asked him leading questions that allowed him to make his main points.

The take at WUWT on this is a bit skewed if you ask me, and it no way shows any crumbling in resolve.

It would have been a perfect opportunity to point out some simple mathematical realities about emissions from China and India and what they really mean about reductions in countries such as Canada and Australia, an opportunity that was missed.

” reference to a cavalier dismissing as an outlier anything that does not agree with your pre-conceived notion. I am thinking of modifying the joke the next time to replace the astronomer with a climate scientist.”

Or, more accurately, to an Economist with a wish to sit in the House of Lords.”

The reason why China’s coal is a smaller proportion of energy production is because China has an extremely aggressive nuclear construction program. The latest plant to go online is the Yangjiang unit 1 with 1080 MWe and is a CPR-1000 pressurized water reactor. There are a total of 5 more plants under construction at that same site and Yangjiang-1 is the 20th Chinese nuclear plant to connect to the grid. All six reactors at that site are expected to be operational by 2018. The Fuqing-1 plant has recently undergone its “hot” tests and two other plants are currently pressure testing their containment at last word. The Fujian site will also host 6 reactors. A total of 28 nuclear plants are currently under construction in China in addition to the 20 currently operating.

The presenter seems to be implying that if China can reduce their reliance on coal, then so can Australia. The problem with that line of thinking is that Australia has exactly zero commercial nuclear power generation and as far as I know, has no plans to build any. So the means by which China has reduced the coal portion of her energy production mix is unavailable to Australia. Holding up China as some sort of an example for Australia to emulate is complete nonsense given the current regulatory environment in that country.

I think the ABC presenter let Stern get away with murder! It was like watching the BBC having a cosy love me-love you chat with the leader of the Lib-Dem (i.e. Liberal) Party. The Chinese are rapidly increasing their coal production to lessen their imports – factual common sense. They say they will reduce their “consumption” of coal in about 10 years time – wishful thinking and highly unlikely!

In addition, while coal might be a decreasing proportion to the total energy production, what is the actual absolute coal consumption? Coal consumption could still be rising but is limited to mine production and port capacity for imports though overall energy production could be rising faster due to the nuclear plants being brought online. So while coal’s total percentage of the energy production might be in decline, the amount of energy produced by coal could well be steady or increasing in China.

According to Rupert Darwall in The Age of Global Warming, it was China that derailed the 2009 Copenhagen Conference – because they weren’t about to compromise their development plans for the sake of an agreement on Global Warming. Darwall also wrote that China’s chief climatologist , or at least the main govt advisor on the topic, had already told the Chinese officials not to worry too much about AGW. So I suspect that while China may be willing to attend meetings, and even talk up renewables, their energy policy including use of coal is not affected by any attempts to reduce CO2. They may also have other reasons to improve their energy mix such as reducing (real) pollution.

There is little joy to be had in this ABC interview.
At the end it leaves the strong,on message, idea that anyone that bucks the line is ‘an outlier’.
For the mathematical that means someone, like a piece of data or observation, that should be discarded.
So the narrative is reinforced that we should be very afraid.
Note that no skeptic was interviewed, an easy task if they had wanted.
The ABC is only in dispute with the opposition, ie the ALP, when the Greens are worried, on CO2.
It then takes the Greens line.

Even the CBC (Canada;s version of the uber-warmist BBC or the Aussie’s ABC) is finally catching on to the global warming scam.

______________________

From a friend,

This little YouTube video is only a minute and a half in length. My friend just sent it to me. It’s funny and pretty much sums up what we here are all feeling about winter. It’s been hanging on sooooo long!!! Woke up to it snowing this morning….againnn….. They say it will be warming up on
Monday…. Look at the video if you have a moment.

Jeff in Calgary says:
March 28, 2014 at 9:53 am
“Serious question: Why are the warmies ranting about China anyway? Is this a strawman “example of good”? Suggesting, maybe we should have a global communist government; then we could all like in a green paridise, just like China? or “Look, even China is getting on board!””

Our Western leftist journos are all Maoists; they grew up in decades where Stalin was already known to be a murderer of tens of millions; but Mao was still untouchable. That’s why the NYT and the BBC a few weeks ago had fawning articles to Mao’s 130th (I think) birthday that could have been written by the Chicoms themselves, completely ignoring the tens of millions of dead during the Great Leap Forward and the Culture Revolution.
So, they’d rather cut off their right hand before writing anything critical of China.

Stern’s a fair example of how someone like Tol is dismissed – taken down in the eyes of people not following any of this very closely. Or at all.
Yes, he’s defensive and we like to see that. But for the informal masses – who’ve stopped worrying for the time being but are still buying the ‘consensus’ and comfortable with it – he’s just cut Tor off at the knees.

Anthony:
I’d like to nominate the rgbatduke at
March 28, 2014 at 9:49 am comment for a separate post. A clear and detailed explanation of the (apparently still misunderstood) atmospheric “greenhouse” effect. Excellent!
Bob, retired physicist

Reblogged this on Flying Tiger Comics and commented:
Unmentioned but in the described report are the constant references to shifting education to fit the new kinds of thoughtways required to fit in with Jay Forester’s 1970s Limits to Growth modelling for the Club of Rome and the World Dynamics software simulations he created subsequently. As the materials acknowledge education globally is no longer focusing on what is an accurate representation of reality. Instead, the focus is on what visually stimulates emotions to take action.

to anyone who doesn’t think this was tough questioning by Jones, u obviously aren’t familiar with the softly softly approach of the ABC to all things CAGW. relatively speaking, this was a real breakthrough, and Stern must be wondering what hit him.

It might be interesting for you to Google coal surface fires. When I was sitting a unit ‘The Earth in Crisis?” at UNE (Armidale NSW) I got a recent book out and it mentioned how China’s Eastern coal fields were losing 250,000 tonnes of coal each year from surface fires that are very hard to put out. The amount of pollution they were creating was equal to the amount of pollution caused by America’s combined cars and trucks per year. The same with India, to a lesser degree, and Indonesia whose forest fires were started by surface coal fires, and burned for 4 years. We have a burning mountain in NSW that is caused by subsurface brown coal burning, even the Aborigines knew about this, and the first colonists thought it was a volcano. So coal can cause pollution but few mention this as it is something we can’t control at the moment.

Pat, and the ABC are under criticism from the present government for their handling of some controversial management of the question of our navy personnel deliberately burning men’s hands on an engine they were trying to disable to gain entry as asylum seekers into Australia. They were sent back to Indonesia where they complained about their treatment, so I think the ABC are soft peddling at the moment. It was a nasty segment, with one failed asylum seeker, threatening Australia with a reminder of 9/11 and killing Tony Abbot.

Pretty sympathetic interviewer, is Aussie TV like that throughout?
But I wonder how your average Aussie (and Canadian) takes to being lectured to (and slighly threatened) by a Brit. Watching that made me feel like we have a world govt telling unruly nations to behave themselves, for the good of the planet.
*****************************************
Maaate, it is like this. For far to long Australians have been lectured to by the POME. They know it all. They have always done it better and come out here to lecture us in their ways because, in their view, we are under educated and still on a learning curve and desperately need help. And they are just the ones to give it. Arrogance in the extreme.

Little do they realise that they are ignored and mocked.

Then again, I have some that are wonderful friends from the UK. They are not all the same. Like everywhere, there are a few duds.

To typify our thinking, they are summed up in our jokes.

Pom.. ” For 10 cents I’d go back home.”
Australian… ” Here’s 20 cents, take one of your mates with you !”

Col Mosby: China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing during the 2004-2010 period.

Reread your piece carefully. Nowhere do you have an argument that coal use is decreasing in China. All you have are claims that other types of energy production are increasing at a faster rate, compared to their baselines. The future is literally not known, but every reasonable extrapolation to the near future based on the recent past is that Chinese coal consumption will continue to increase.

If there’s one thing that the Chinese communists have learned from their Russian counterparts, it’s the value of what Lenin called “useful idiots” – those woolly lefty liberals in the West who are only too happy to parrot their propaganda lines whilst remaining wilfully and stubbornly ignorant of the truth behind the scenes.

Lord Stern has once more established himself as a leading light among that legion of happy offenders. Even Tony Jones, who despite being an intelligent and incisive interrogator is prone to giving leftist interviewees some free kicks that they don’t deserve, was clearly amazed by Stern’s apparent eagerness to believe the Chinese line on coal. Given that Stern is also a prominent catastrophist, one of those who thinks we’re already roasting/under water/sheltering from hurricanes, with much worse to come next year, one might have expected him to take a harder line on the nation now responsible for half of global coal consumption.

But then, he is an economist, so he’ll believe anything.

Q: Why do some economists accept everything that climate scientists say?
A: Because both implicitly believe in models, even those proved to be absolute b*llocks.

Brian Lilley is the prime time Canadian News anchor for Sun News, which get greater viewership than the CBC.

The sad thing (but not at all a surprise), the CBC network with their radio network included, ABC (Australia, although the one in the USA follows suit and sets the example), are only alive today because without over a billion $$ in taxpayers subsidies here in Canada, the CBC would not even exist today,
My HT to Sun news, Brian Lilley, Ezra Levant Michael Cohen etc. and the rest of the crew. You go guys! But what is even more evident is that at one time ( 40’s 50’s) CBC, BBC and many other TV and radio networks were fighting against the Eastern block and at the time very much anti progressive and socialism, but my, has that ever changed, it is even more apparent in all facets of our lives from schooling to “the everybody is a winner mentality!!

Hey guys the word is Pom. I am one. But naturalized Ozzie. And we were not 10 pound immigrants or a whinging poms. Where they had to work in hotter temps, and they left England to get away from the rain. Used to strong unions that went on strike if the T Breaks were cut short of 30 secs, something that was new to them. Didn’t Lord M once accuse him of something. He might have been on T.E.R.I board at one time.

Gaunaut, whatever, the guy who said farm kangaroos instead of ruminants to save the planet? When he visited one of our organically minded farms, he was told the new methods were to increase the production not cut down CO2 or methane.

Lord Stern is in a wonderful profession with a reputation for rigor and skill.

BBC – 19 April 2013The student who caught out the profs
This week, economists have been astonished to find that a famous academic paper often used to make the case for austerity cuts contains major errors. Another surprise is that the mistakes, by two eminent Harvard professors, were spotted by a student doing his homework……

His professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst had set his graduate class an assignment – pick an economics paper and see if you can replicate the results. It’s a good exercise for aspiring researchers……

EU commissioner Olli Rehn and influential US Republican politician Paul Ryan have both quoted a 90% debt-to-GDP limit to support their austerity strategies.

But while US politicians were arguing over whether to inject more stimulus into the economy, the euro was creaking under the strain of forced austerity, and a new coalition government in the UK was promising to raise taxes and cut spending to get the economy under control – Thomas Herndon’s homework assignment wasn’t going well.

BBC – 10 January 2014
“Only days before the 1929 stock market crash, one of the best known economists of the time, Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University, announced that “stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau”. Even after the crash occurred, Fisher insisted it was only a market correction that would soon be over. Losing most of his own fortune, the distinguished economist was as deluded as nearly everyone else. In case you’re wondering who anticipated the crash, two who did were the mobster Al Capone, who described the stock market in the boom years as a racket, and Charlie Chaplin, who unsuccessfully pleaded with his friend, the songwriter Irving Berlin, to sell out the day before the market collapsed.”http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25680144

Garnout also worked with the Aussie and PNG Govn’ts to sell land to mining companies in the 70’s. He was also on the board of the PNG copper and gold mine Ok Tedi. He, like Al Gore, has made a lot of money from digging stuff out of the ground for energy intensive industries and selling it. To give credit where it is due however, he also managed the clean up of some toxic spills at Ok Tedi too.

With regards to POM and POME, the terms are interchangeable, and pretty much mean the same thing. Just some Aussies can’t take a joke when joking themselves. POM, in Aus and NZ, is short for Pommy/Pommie, or Prisoner Of his/her Majesty and POME is as described previously.

Lord Stern is either incompetent or a liar. See this.
What is more he is being protected by the “system”. In his reply to this letter The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards stated “a members views and opinions are outside my remit”
The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards,
House of Lords, London,
SW1A 0PW.
Dear Mr. Kernaghan.
As you can see I sent the accompanying letter to Lord Stern on 25th April, 2012. Despite the fact it was sent by recorded delivery, Lord Stern did not have the courtesy to reply. Having given Lord Stern ample opportunity to reply to my enquiry, I now believe it is appropriate to make a formal complaint about Lord Stern.
I have taken a particular interest in Sections 3.3 and 3.4 of the Stern Report, which largely concerns crop productivity, as I am a Plant Physiologist by training (M.A. PhD, Cantab) and can therefore write with authority in this area.
My first concern is why Lord Stern used data from an obscure publication (Wheeler et al 1996) and indeed, manipulated it to produce a conclusion that was not supported by the original authors? They clearly state in their abstract “Mean seed dry weight was increased by > 72 % at elevated CO2, because grain numbers per ear did not decline with an increase in temperature at elevated CO2”. Furthermore whilst Lord Stern went to the trouble to delete data, which did not support his narrative, from the graph (see my original letter), he further emphasised the apparent decline by adding a “dogleg” line, which did not appear in the original graph.
Moreover one has to question why Lord Stern did not chose to present evidence from multiple publications, all available at the time, that clearly demonstrate that under the scenarios of increased CO2 and temperature used in his report: “Projections of future warming depend on projections of global emissions (discussed in chapter 7). If annual emissions were to remain at today’s levels, greenhouse gas levels would reach close to 550 ppm CO2e by 2050. Using the lower and upper 90% confidence bounds based on the IPCC TAR range and recent research from the Hadley Centre, this would commit the world to a warming of around 2 – 5°C.” (Stern review Page 12 and Table 1.1) plant and agricultural productivity are increased, rather than decreased as Lord Stern states: “In tropical regions, even small amounts of warming will lead to declines in yield. In higher latitudes, crop yields may increase initially for moderate increases in temperature but then fall. Higher temperatures will lead to substantial declines in cereal production around the world, particularly if the carbon fertilisation effect is smaller than previously thought, as some recent studies suggest.” (Stern review Page 67).
Even a cursory search of the relevant literature, available at the time, shows that Lord Stern’s conclusions are seriously flawed. Perhaps the most authoritative paper of the time is that of Ainsworth and Long (2005) which collated data from 120 primary, peer-reviewed articles describing responses to plants under a variety of high [CO2] (475–600 ppm) scenarios, precisely those envisaged in his report. They state that: “Stimulation of photosynthesis at elevated [CO2] is theoretically predicted to be greater at higher temperatures (Drake et al., 1997). When the FACE data were divided between experiments conducted below 25°C and those conducted above 25°C, this prediction was supported. At lower temperatures (< 25°C) Asat was increased by 19%, and at temperatures above 25°C Asat was increased by 30% when plants were grown under elevated [CO2] . Precisely what Wheeler et al (1996) found. Significantly they quote Drake et al (1997) which demonstrates that the theoretical underpinning of increased plant productivity, in response to elevated CO2 and temperatures, was well-known at the time Lord Stern wrote his report, further undermining Lord Stern’s partisan conclusions.
Finally I note that the other graph that Lord Stern has chosen to use in Figure 3.4 (Page 69), from Vara Prasad et al (2001), uses Peanut (hardly a major crop) as an example of a tropical crop where “even small amounts of warming will lead to declines in yield”. However Lord Stern studiously omits to say that the authors only exposed the plants to high temperatures, rather than in combination with high [CO2], as is required by Lord Stern’s own future high temperature, high [CO2] scenarios.
Accordingly it is clear that Lord Stern has some serious questions to answer:
1) Why did he exclude mainstream papers from his review that clearly show that plant productivity will increase under the future [CO2] and temperature scenarios he predicts?
2) Why did he deliberately remove data from the Wheeler et al (1996) paper, which clearly stated “grain numbers per ear did not decline with an increase in temperature at elevated CO2”, to suggest precisely the opposite?
3) Why did he further manipulate the already altered graph, using a superimposed line, to emphasise a decline in productivity when, in fact, no such decline existed under his stated scenario?
4) Why did he further compound the misinformation presented in the Wheeler paper with that of Vara Prasad et al (2001) which does not duplicate the conditions of his chosen high [CO2], high temperature scenario?
I do not accept that the misinformation in this part of Lord Stern’s review is the result of lack of expertise. Lord Stern is one of the World’s foremost economists and well versed in the collation, interpretation and presentation of complex data. The fact of the matter is that Lord Stern actively and deliberately chose and manipulated data to support a particular conclusion. Any reasonable person would conclude that these omissions of fact and manipulation were specifically designed to mislead Parliament. The fact that so much Government policy is directly informed by Lord Stern’s report is particularly disturbing.
Accordingly I request that you communicate my concerns to Lord Stern and I await his and your considered reply.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. D. Keiller.
Ainsworth, E.A. and Long, S.P. (2005). What have we learned from 15 years of free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE)? A meta-analytic review of the responses of photosynthesis, canopy properties and plant production to rising CO2. New Phytologist 165: 351-372.
Drake BG, Gonzàlez-Meler MA, Long SP. (1997). More efficient plants: a consequence of rising atmospheric CO2? Annual Review of Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Biology 48: 609–639.
Wheeler TR, Batts GR, Ellis RH, Hadley P and Morison JIL (1996) Growth and Yield of Winter Wheat (Triticum Aestivum) Crops in Response to CO2 and Temperature. Journal of Agricultural Science, Cambridge, 127, 37-48.
Vara Prasad, P.V., P.Q. Craufurd, V.G. Kakani, Wheeler TR and Boote KJ. (2001): 'Influence of high temperature on fruit-set and pollen germination in peanuts', Australian Journal of Plant Physiology 28: 233.

A study out yesterday in Nature Geoscience by Walter Immerzeel, a physical geographer at Utrecht University, suggests that, in at least two major Himalayan watersheds, river flows and runoff should rise until 2100.

“We show that the peak in meltwater is later than we previously thought, which in combination with a projected increase in precipitation results in an increase in water availability until the end of the century,” he said.

The two watersheds Immerzeel reports on in the paper are those of the Baltoro and Langtang glaciers, which feed the Indus and Ganges rivers, respectively. In the Baltoro watershed, this is largely due to more glacier runoff from melt. In the Langtang, increased precipitation drives the extra runoff.

Pom, pommie or pommes is named because of the pommels on their military bonnets thank you very much. Well the Americans even called us limies. Pomme is a short for Pomme de tere, the potatoe. Anyway, Lord Monckton is English too. I remember one very English QANTAS pilot being addressed by some Ocker bloke in a pub back in the 60s. “Yer donna mind if I call yer a Pom?” “Of course not old chap, so long as you don’t mind me calling you an Australian?” For some reason there was once a thought we English would be insulted, we are not. You can’t insult a Brit. We are too self assured. However, unfairly in the 19th Century one pollie, called corn stalks (those born in Australia from either convicts or free settlers, ‘South Sea Island cockneys”. Enough said, eh. Stern is self defending himself, and others.

I am looking forward to July when a new senate is elected in Australia. There is so much anti LNP/Abbott media coverage it’s rediculous. Get used to it left leaning Australians, democracy stinks! Abbott will put an end to the greenwashing and greentape.

The EIA states that coal supplied 69% of China’s total primary energy in 2011.
They also state that coal provided 66% of installed electricity generation capacity in 2012 (i.e. before capacity factors are included).
They also state that coal provided almost 80% of total electrical energy.
They also state that China’s coal consumption will increase by another 50% by 2040.

oh my god, did you guys take any brains with you when we sent you down under or has all that sun cooked them dry? The world is laughing/grimacing at your liberal government, and as we dig into your newws and blogs we realise, actually, he is speaking for a fair amount of deluded aussies, surprised we were!. Climate change is real, it’s happening, and it’s not going to be great you backwater f***tards. Ask your unscientific minds, why do you show so much anger and arrogance despite a wealth of evidence that makes you look like an idiot? Who has been spending billions trying to sow the seed of doubt in your mind, that you, without scientific reasoning were so happy to take on board? What self-justification do you seek, and how far will you read around the subject at the risk of perturbing your own delicate egos?
?

Unbelievable, is that an April 1 joke. Must be. After July 1st democracy will be back as normal.
I wonder if your real name is Tim Flannery. Having lost his lucrative job, I suspect he is spitting chips.